"Twilight" Sequel Gets New Director

We knew that "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke was kicked to the curb shortly after the film opened. Now it looks like a new director is on board and the studio is wasting no time fast-tracking the sequel.

Although no official announcement has been made, Entertainment Weekly is going out on a limb to say that the director for "New Moon" will be Chris Weitz. Weitz was last seen trying to hide from the fact that he directed "the Golden Compass" but I know him better as the un-credited director of "American Pie" whom he co-directed with his brother Paul. There is also a rumor that Weitz will also direct "Eclipse" the third film in the teen vampire franchise.

On Wednesday the website Bloody Disgusting reported that the script for New Moon has already been turned in to Summit Entertainment, who are wasting no time fast-tracking this film into production. There is also talk of shooting the two next stories in the franchise back-to-back in order to save on budget and to speed up the process of getting the third film out to the theater even quicker.

Ordinairly this kind of alacrity would raise a red flag for me. A studio that rushes a film into production - presumably with the hope of getting it on the big screen before most of the target audience reaches puberty and moves on to other things- usually tends to be sloppy with the script. But Melissa Rosenberg, who penned (or rather, re-penned) "Twilight" has shown that she can work well under pressure and my sources tell me that her adaptation of the Stephanie Meyer book was spot on. Of course, I wouldn't know, since I didn't read the book, nor see the first film and I have generally no interest in seeing the other two.

In the meantime, in case you are not one of the screaming 13 year old girls that's seen the movie 87 times already, here is a summary of "Twilight" done with puppets: